


Gravity May Go Offline

by salvadore



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: All Magic Comes With a Price, Implied Relationships, Multi, POV Second Person, Past Relationship(s), Pre-Canon, Spoilers, Trick or Treat: Trick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-04 19:00:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16352363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salvadore/pseuds/salvadore
Summary: Each card is laid carefully. Asra’s fingers linger on the edges after each placement. In profile, Julian looks lost. And you remember how you asked the library,‘show me who they are to each other.’





	Gravity May Go Offline

**Author's Note:**

  * For [infernal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/infernal/gifts).



> Title inspired by the [oh, and the gravity might go offline later today, stay tuned. ](http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=671) a softer world
> 
> This story takes references from multiple key chapters from both Asra and Julian's routes. If you haven't read those then, warning, a few spoilers are implied (if not outright spoiled). Thank you so much to infernal for the opportunity to write in the realm of The Arcana. This was a new experience style wise. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it. Happy Halloween!

You wake up with a sense that something is terribly wrong. All around you is the familiar sight of the shop and it’s walls of glass jars full of ingredients and herbs. And yet. It's not how you left it. You would have sworn everything was well stocked the last time. But before you all the jars are depleted. When you search your mind, you can’t remember when you were last here.

Everything that should be familiar is somehow unfamiliar. Even the smell of the shop is wrong. There’s no scent of the soft lavender Asra uses in medicines and cleansers. And it doesn’t smell of the saffron and cinnamon you use. When Asra goes away you try and make the shop smell like the bakery, like home and warmth and welcoming. The smell should at least be stale. Instead it is empty. Devoid. And the shop feels chilling. Then you remember.

You shouldn't be in the shop.

You had dozed off warmed by the hearth in Portia’s cabin, watching as Julian spun a tale of his time at sea. His hands had been gesticulating as he grew nearer the climax of the tale, and you could hear Portia giggling nearby. You had wanted to stay awake, if only to keep this moment. But Julian had caught you, eyes struggling to stay open. His performer’s grin had softened as he reached out gently to run his thumb over your cheek. "Sleep. I'll be right here," he’d promised.

You had no reason to think you would wake up a world away.

You’re starting to wonder what sort of dream this is, when the door to the shop opens. A figure slides in, dark cape making them appear like a shadow pulling free from the darkness outside. As they draw into the light the plague mask becomes visible.

It's the same one Julian tossed away.

“Sneaking in again?” Asra calls from behind you. You jump when Julian does. But no one notices you.

“I wasn’t certain you’d invite me in,” Julian replies. He removes the mask and to your surprise there’s no eye-patch, no signs of the plague. Just two beautiful slate eyes that stare at Asra forlornly.

“I wouldn’t have.”

Asra is as chilling as the store. But Julian. Julian sounds like the man who bled for you on the canal. There’s an aching longing in his voice when he calls, “Asra.” It hurts for you to hear. It’s plaintive, and despite Julian's smiling, Asra gives only a resolute blankness in return.

"Why are you here?” And this is a side of Asra you've only seen in the memories from the library. His eyes are dark, fathomless. There is a venom lurking there. He turns his back toward Julian even as he speaks, heading for the reading room. His fingers drag in the soft material of the curtains, drawing them closed behind him as he goes.

Julian vibrates with the indecision of whether to follow, and you remember, unasked for, how you asked the library, _‘show me who they are to each other.’_

As if you have some magic over this realm, your own words ring through your ears, and Julian is off like a shot. He scrambles through the curtains, face heating with frustration. “I am afraid for you, Asra!”

In the reading room, Asra sits, shuffling his tarot deck. Calmly he replies, “Try again.”

Julian grows redder, cheeks ablaze as he curls fists in the curtain, and he looks as though he may rip them down. “I can’t protect you if you don’t -”

“You can’t even protect yourself.” Asra carefully cuts the deck as he speaks. He's nowhere near Julian’s volume, voice barely raised. But it visibly startles Julian. “Your best idea has been leeches. So. Try again.”

Asra deals a Celtic cross spread while Julian gapes at him. The quiet of the shop counts the time it takes for Julian’s surprise to turn into embarrassment. He turns his head so you can see more clearly, and so Asra cannot, and wipes at his eyes with the sleeve of his coat.

Each card is laid carefully. And Asra’s fingers linger on their edges after each placement. In profile, Julian looks lost. He closes his eyes, and appears to brace himself. It’s a vignette that lasts less than a moment, but the ache of it lingers. Finally, Julian exhales and Asra lays the last card.

“Come here, Julian,” Asra says.

Though he spares a second to drag his fingers through his hair, face solemn and eyes drawn, Julian does as he’s asked.

You have to step forward to catch the curtain before it closes on them. The fabric is thin as a whisper against your fingers and holds in your grip even though it shouldn’t. Even though you are no better than a ghost here. And you watch as Julian slides into the booth beside Asra. You watch as he presses the backs of his fingers in a feather light touch to Julian’s wet, heated cheeks. And Julian, his eyes flutter closed as he tries to lean into the contact. It retreats too quickly.

“Try again,” Asra says. “Tell me why you keep coming here.”

“I’m afraid.” The sentence ends short this time. When Julian opens his eyes again, you think you read a shame in them.

Asra smiles. It’s an unkind smile, and it doesn’t reach his eyes which have not changed from their deep, cold gaze. He presses a hand over Julian’s, and with the other Asra begins to reveal the spread. Major and minor Arcana reveal themselves beneath his fingers tips. There is a spread of pentacles, some upright. And some lay like the Magician and the Devil. Reversed.

You can hear the cards’ voices so distantly. But not because they are being quiet. They’re clamouring in a way you haven’t heard before and It makes you strain against the doorway.  The cards seem to be shouting at you from very far away. Asra raises his hand again, fingers curling around Julian’s chin. Sympathetically your fingers cling through the curtains to the wood of the frame. And Asra is dragging the nail of his thumb so lightly across Julian’s bottom lip. It should look gentle, but for some reason it make you afraid.

Then you feel something, someone, brush up against you.

You turn, feeling as though you’ve been caught. The knowledge this is a dream or a memory, and that you should be intangible has been forgotten. Until you go unnoticed. The new arrival doesn’t stop moving even as you reach out instinctively to grab them.

And it’s Asra. Another Asra. He is immediately familiar in his wide eyed confusion.

“What is this?” he asks and his voice is strained. He wavers in the doorway.

“Welcome, Asra,” they say. And their voice takes on a new quality. The Asra at the table curls their free hand in Julian’s, and their nails look longer against Julian’s skin. When Julian tries to move away, apprehension visible, the nails bite into the skin of his hand.

Despite Julian’s motion, the hand on his chin stays firm. Not yet biting.

“I was just testing your dear Doctor Devorak,” they say. The tone is deceptively polite. “Isn’t it about time you tell him why you’ve returned to Vesuvia?

Asra stands still, like a man encountering a wild animal with enough sense to know it will strike. He remains quiet.

“Before you go dragging him too much further into your plot?” they ask further. “Or is your intent to involve him in a bargain unwittingly? Ignorance won’t save him anymore than it did your a-”

“When I asked you to appear, it wasn’t for you to perform tests and parlor tricks,” Asra cuts in. It’s a reckless insult to make, and the energy turns sinister at Asra’s interruption. 

“You are determined to dalliance with bargains and debts that you cannot fathom the scope of,” they say. Their fingers draw down from Julian’s chin to his throat. And Julian sits with utter stillness.

You don’t know this Asra who is standing beside you, face blank of any concern. The two Asra’s eye each other down until, finally, Julian is released.

Julian scrambles from the table, falling over his coat and slipping to the floor. He hits the floor hard, but keeps moving, feet caught up in the tales of his coat as he puts distance between himself and the table. The wall catches him, and his chest heaves with the sudden adrenaline as he props himself up.

You watch has he splits cautious attention between the two Asra’s, rubbing a hand over the crescent marks pressed into the skin over his hand. Blood didn’t break through, but they’re purple and it’s a certainty that blood could have been spilled if there had been a want for it.

At the table, the other Asra is transformed. Or rather, distorted. Like they’re phasing between the illusion of Asra and their truer form. The nails on their hands look longer and claw-like. A fowl like nature sharpens the shape and points of their bones.

You know who they are.

“He can’t even tell when you aren’t you, Asra.”

You know they are an Arcana. There’s the sense of a name on the tip of your tongue.

Sharp eyes find you. Long fingers linger on the reversed Four of Pentacles. You have the time to remember 'posession, greediness' from Asra's teachings about that card. Then an external forces seizes you up, and you are as unable to move as Julian had been.

“You’ll be alone with a bargain you can’t repay.” Those hard eyes bore into you and you know what they’re say isn’t a threat. It can’t be when the ill-intent they promise isn’t coming _from them_.

You wake up back in Portia’s cottage. And though you find yourself still wrapped up beside the hearth, you feel an unshakeable chill.


End file.
